1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a die eye number determination method, a die eye number determination apparatus, and an electronic apparatus using the same, and in particular to a die eye number determination method, a die eye number determination apparatus, and an electronic apparatus using the same, which can use a die available in the market, as well as can determine in image recognition eye numbers on a plurality of dice used at a time.
2. Background Information
For example, a sugoroku game requires a dice as a tool to play the game. And some of home video game machines, board games or the like require a dice. Conventionally determination of an eye number on a cast die is performed by visual observation of game participants.
However, in games such as electronic game personal machines or electronic personal computers, almost all of game contents, game progresses, win-loss records and the like are displayed on an image display and these games are performed by operating a controller or a keyboard. In case a player who is familiar with games such as the game personal machines or the personal computers play a conventional sugoroku game, the player is not familiar with an old-fashioned game method in which a player rolls a die with the player's hand and the eye number on the die is visually determined by the player. On the other hand, the elderly are difficult to become familiar with a purely electronic game in which a game is performed by an operation of a controller.
And there is a case where a die is used in anything other than a game. For example, in an arithmetic lesson in school, a math problem is set using a die as a teaching tool. Since the die is small, it is thought that students can not visualize a state of the die, such as an eye number and an eye color clearly, which causes weakening recognition of participation in lessons and reducing the interest in lessons by half.
Therefore, Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 08-215423 has disclosed a dice eye recognition apparatus that can electronically determine the number of eyes on a dice. In the apparatus, a magnetic piece is housed in each face of the numbers 1-6, a magnet generated in the magnetic piece is detected by a magnetic sensor, and a detection signal by scanning is processed in a process control circuit, thereby to determine the number of eyes on the dice.
However, according to the conventional apparatus of determining the number of eyes on the dice, since special dice that houses a magnetic piece therein is necessary to use, dice commercially sold in a toy store or the like can not be used. And in a game using a die the number of dice is not limited to one, but there is a case a plurality of dice may be used. In this case there is no problem if all dice have the same size, the same specification (color, size and shape of eyes, and the like). However, in a case where not all dice have the same in the above aspects, it becomes difficult to confirm the number of eyes. Therefore, a conventional apparatus which can determine the number of eyes on dice available in the market are not provided yet.
In view of the above, there exists a need for a die eye number determination apparatus, a die eye number determination method, and an electronic apparatus using the same which overcome the above-mentioned problems in the related art. The present invention addresses this need in the related art and also other needs, which will become apparent to those skilled in the art from this disclosure.